There were several narrow inlets in the high cliffs which were exceedingly deep, but barely wide enough to admit of the passage of a large boat or a small vessel.

Many of these inlets or creeks, which in some respects resembled the narrow fiords of Norway, though on a miniature scale, were so thickly fringed with trees, and the luxuriant undergrowth peculiar to southern climes, that their existence could not be detected from the sea.

Indeed, even after the entrance to any one of them was discovered, no one would have imagined it to extend so far inland.
Two of those deep, narrow inlets, opening from opposite sides of the cape which lay close to the islet above referred to, had approached so close to each other at their upper extremities that they had at last met, in consequence of the sea undermining and throwing down the cliff that separated them.

Thus the cape was in reality an island; and the two united inlets formed a narrow strait, through which the Avenger passed to her former anchorage by means of four pair of powerful sweeps or oars.

This secret passage was well known to the pirates; and it was with a lurking feeling that it might some day prove of use to him, that Gascoyne invariably anchored near it when he visited the island as a sandal-wood trader.
During the transit, the carpenters of the schooner were not idle.